Tuesday 2 December 2025: Pet shenanigans

And so here we are, in December. Is it snowing yet?

I had a physio appointment first thing Thursday morning, and straight after my dirty cuppa, I was off. The poet worked from home so he could supervise the animals. I got back at midday (I had a long session with the physiotherapist) to find there’d been minor shenanigans and a broken floor vase! (The puppy did it, apparently…) But at least everyone was in one piece.

It was a good physio appointment. We’re trying to fix my back pain, which I was originally told was probably spondylosis or spondylitis (one is age-related wear and tear, the other is following an injury, or something like that). Now, after a thorough examination followed by a bit of a workout, the physio confirmed what the physio triage had actually confirmed. It was more likely just age-related but, the most important thing, fixable.

He thinks I actually have a stenosis, where the tunnels that carry the sciatica nerve are getting narrower. The good news is, he doesn’t think it will ever need surgery and that I should be able to manage it quite well with exercise and stretching. We’re going to arrange that for when my light therapy treatment is coming to an end.

We’ll start with a one-to-one with him, then he’ll take me to the gym, and then I’ll join some kind of class or two – aerobic, yoga, pilates, tai chi, or something. I’m basically getting a personal trainer courtesy of the NHS. They’ll get me started, and when I’m confident I’m doing everything right, we’ll look at me continuing by myself at home. Although I do think if I want to stay with the class(es), I’ll probably have to pay then.

Good news, though. Am very happy with that one.

When I got in it was obviously time for our midday breakfast, then the first thing I did was share last week’s gig list post. I wrote up Friday’s November wrap-up blog post and scheduled it. I created the Hello, December and December wrap-up graphics. And I wrote up Monday’s Hello, December blog post.

An email came through from DepositPhotos with a Black Friday deal. I don’t usually do Black Friday anything and these guys are always sending me offers throughout the year. But the Black Friday deal is usually their best one. This one was for 100 (licensed) images for $65 (apx £49). That’s a really good deal, I think. And I’ve been waiting for it all year. So I followed the link. Only to see that I was actually being offered 100 (licensed) images for £65 (apx $85). That’s a £15/$20 difference.

So I opened a chat to see if it was a mistake, and she said no mistake, the offer I could take out was 100 (licensed) images for £65. I pointed out that this was £15 more than the offer I’d been sent, and she asked me for a screenshot of the one I’d been sent, which I grabbed and sent to her. She must have gone away to speak to someone, because there was a bit of lag. 

But when she came back she confirmed that it was a mistake and that she’d let the marketing department know, but as I’d been sent the $65 offer, here was a link to claim it at that rate. I thanked her for her speed and graciousness and snatched the deal before it expired.

Excellent service.

I think I must have noticed something similar this time last year, but this time last year I didn’t bother querying it and didn’t bother with the offer either. Now I have 100 bona fide (licensed) images I can use to my heart’s content, up to half a million print copies each (I’ll never need that many). I just have to make sure I don’t use any of the free downloads they offer me every week now, because when I tested that, it looked like it might come out of my 100. 

To make sure it all worked, I went and found a new image for the next Marcie Craig short story, A Day at the Races, and I tried it out over a duplicate of the existing cover that had a completely free image on the front. The one I downloaded on Thursday was much better quality than the one I’d previously used, so once again, I was a happy bunny.

Spaniel decided he wanted to have play time with me, as he hadn’t had any with me yet that day, so I took time out to do that. Puppy came too, naturally. And by then it was time for our afternoon dinner. I started today’s blog, and then after dinner, I sat in the office reading chair and carried on with the new client edit. As I knew I wasn’t likely to do anything other than that for the rest of the day, I scheduled this post to publish.